The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025


#298: The History of BBQ and Becoming a Backyard Pitmaster


Episode Stats

Misogynist Sentences

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1


Summary

Southern barbecue is a uniquely American food, and one thing that unites southern barbecue is its unabashed love for the humble pork butt. My guest today on the show has taken a tour of the south to find barbecue joints who are taking this traditional choice of meat and doing new things with it while sticking to the roots of southern barbecue. His name is Matt Morehouse, and he's our food contributor here at The Art of Manliness and his latest book is The South's Best Butts: Pit Master Secrets for Southern BBQ perfection.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 brad mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well southern
00:00:18.660 barbecue is a uniquely american food and depending on which part of the south you're in you're going
00:00:22.700 to get a different answer as to what is true southern barbecue despite the differences one
00:00:27.160 thing that unites southern barbecue is its unabashed love for the humble pork butt my guest today on the
00:00:31.380 show has taken a tour of the south to find barbecue joints who are taking this traditional choice of
00:00:35.160 meat and doing new things with it while sticking to the roots of southern q his name is matt more
00:00:39.580 he's our food contributor here at aom and his latest book is the south's best butts pit master
00:00:44.300 secrets for southern barbecue perfection today on the show matt discusses the details of the history
00:00:49.200 of barbecue and explains why pork is a staple in the southern variety of barbecue he then explains
00:00:54.480 what exactly a pork butt is and no it's not the rear of a pig and why it's such an ideal meat for
00:00:59.600 smoking he then shares how and why barbecue flavors and techniques differ in different parts of the
00:01:04.120 south and highlights a few pit masters who are adding new takes on this traditional dish we then
00:01:08.680 end our conversation by going through a step-by-step process of smoking the perfect pork butt as well as
00:01:14.120 some dishes you can prepare with it at your next barbecue your mouth is going to be watering after
00:01:18.000 you hear the show after the show is over check out our show notes at aom.is slash pork butt where you
00:01:23.160 find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic
00:01:25.640 matt more welcome back to the show thanks so much for having me back on so for those of you who follow
00:01:35.960 the art of manliness website matt has been contributing food content for us over the years
00:01:40.840 a lot of just great recipes for guys who want to cook and host and things like that had him on the show
00:01:47.220 while that go for his book the southern gentleman's kitchen really fantastic cookbook and he's got a
00:01:51.820 new one out this time it's dedicated to the wonderful world of barbecue particularly southern
00:01:57.220 barbecue so matt what was the inspiration for you to travel around the american south in search of the
00:02:05.400 perfect barbecue pork butt you know i like to say that opinions are like butts everybody has one and
00:02:12.980 being a nashville guy i like to liken everything to music so i think in in terms of barbecue today
00:02:18.920 and you mentioned particularly southern barbecue i don't know that there's any other barbecue besides
00:02:22.900 southern barbecue that starts our first opinion for the podcast there's texas barbecue we can get into
00:02:27.740 that hey i went to texas i went to texas i went to oklahoma so i don't know that washington state
00:02:33.560 truly has barbecue sorry for any listeners up that way for me i i wanted to uh to go on a discovery
00:02:39.500 it's commonly agreed upon the barbecue belt is made up of 12 states think about the carolinas
00:02:45.660 georgia louisiana across the uh the south all the way to texas up up to oklahoma the only people that
00:02:52.000 we kind of forget about in the south is florida sorry but i wanted to go out on the road and
00:02:56.540 showcase all the different styles that regional barbecue has you know dry rubs in memphis mustard
00:03:02.540 based sauces in and south carolina white based sauces in and alabama and by doing a focus on
00:03:10.080 the pork butt that was kind of my medium through which we looked at all the different types of
00:03:14.560 recipes so you're getting a lot of recipes for woods you're getting techniques uh dry rubs whether
00:03:19.600 it's sauced or not how it's served and then of course we round out the book not just with pork butt
00:03:24.600 but we've got brisket and smoked chicken wings and all the sides and desserts that you could ever dream
00:03:29.880 of all right so for our listeners who aren't familiar what is the pork butt is it actually
00:03:34.440 the pig's butt no it's a common misconception right the pork butt actually the butt is actually
00:03:39.920 the ham cut but the pork butt as we're referring to it is actually the pork shoulder and again there's
00:03:45.480 a lot of opinions there's a lot of mystery behind where that name came from but the pork butt got its
00:03:49.860 name back in the day because they used to salt cure the shoulder cut along with all of the other
00:03:55.000 cuts and and pack them in in barrels and those barrels were sold and and the the terminology to
00:04:00.480 refer to that barrel was a butt b-u-t-t it's where we get the name boston butt so it's actually the
00:04:05.940 shoulder cut which typically is a really tough cut you know it's a lot of muscle a bit sinewy and
00:04:11.260 that's what requires such long cooking periods from anywhere from 20 hours as i discovered in st louis
00:04:16.280 all the way down to just a couple of hours and that's the unique thing about it there's kind of 20 ways
00:04:20.520 to skin a cat in the same way with a pork butt so is that why the pork butt is often used in
00:04:25.320 barbecuing because it requires you know a considerable amount of cooking time to get it nice and tender
00:04:29.960 yeah i mean barbecue traces its name most commonly to the term barbacoa which is roasting meats over
00:04:36.500 open coals on spits i think the pork butt is so popular because it's really ubiquitous sorry for the
00:04:42.140 texas and oklahomans but you know to me the pig is the cornerstone of southern barbecue and i think that
00:04:47.780 the pork butt is kind of that veritable cut that everyone goes back to you know it's a humble cut
00:04:53.720 it's cheap stretches to feed a crowd and for me it's the starting point for kind of defining cue
00:04:59.240 as i mentioned earlier you know liking and everything the music i think ribs for a long time have have
00:05:04.980 served as basically the lead singer of the band you know everybody loves ribs they're adored by all but
00:05:09.900 they're quite finicky to prepare and also when you're consuming them you know i think if you look at
00:05:13.920 texas and oklahoma barbecue brisket has come on on the spotlight it's kind of like the lead guitarist
00:05:18.300 is trying to steal some of that spotlight from the rib but the pork butt has always served as kind of
00:05:22.780 the drummer or the basis behind the scenes keeping everybody in time and i wanted to to pay homage to
00:05:29.060 it to uncover what people are doing with that cut from state to state to state right you know i've never
00:05:33.860 been a fan of ribs i mean i'll like them but like it's not like my favorite it's not my favorite thing
00:05:37.820 when there's barbecue i'm like i'll have a rib that's it but i'd rather eat you know
00:05:41.540 a great rib yeah i mean pulled pork is obviously one of my favorites but a great rib can be
00:05:47.440 transcending but you more often than not come across really really bad ribs than you do great
00:05:53.120 ribs i'll tell you uh one of the places we featured in the book is a place called b daddy's barbecue in
00:05:57.420 san antonio texas and they're known for their beef brisket and beef ribs and let me tell you what man
00:06:02.760 i ate more than my weights full of beef ribs that afternoon in san antonio gotta do it right so let's
00:06:08.220 talk about the history of barbecue it's a predominantly southern phenomenon it's it's been
00:06:12.660 transported to other parts of the country but what's the history of barbecue in the south why
00:06:16.560 is it such a big thing there it's cheap uh you know pigs were first brought over by de soto to
00:06:23.840 florida back in the 1400s and it was an animal that could survive long voyages at sea and then it
00:06:29.640 didn't need a whole lot of domestication when it came stateside they could basically let them run
00:06:33.460 wild a problem that we're dealing with still today in the south that being said to to cook
00:06:38.900 these meats it does take a low temperature and quite a bit of time so i think just regionally
00:06:43.460 it's what caused it really to proliferate throughout the south and i dig into the history of one of the
00:06:48.500 unique things that we uncovered is you know the south has had a long storied culture some of it's
00:06:52.560 more troubled than any but back in the in the plantation era one of the rare acts of humanity that you
00:06:57.620 would see amongst slave owners and slaves is they would throw and they're still called these today
00:07:01.780 pig pickings where actually you broke the bonds of social hierarchy and the slave masters would
00:07:06.920 literally dine with slaves and it was a time of celebration it was a time of harvest and that's
00:07:12.380 still a tradition that's carried on obviously not in the same bounds that it is back in the past so
00:07:17.280 you know i think it's always played an important role in the civil war it was a food that could be
00:07:20.940 salt cured and preserved to keep people fighting and cheaply served but i also love politics and i'm not
00:07:26.260 going to talk politics today but barbecue in the south is often found at political rallies it's found
00:07:31.460 at weddings it's found at funerals it's a food that everybody loves it's a food that can serve
00:07:35.860 the masses and i think it's the ultimate comfort food though in different forms you find it throughout
00:07:39.740 the south and now you're finding it throughout the u.s and the rest of the world yeah i mean i think
00:07:43.460 that's interesting the history part was really fascinating that people in the 17th century or
00:07:48.020 the 18th century were having like barbecue parties right i mean it's like it's crazy to think
00:07:53.240 like we think it's like oh it's this thing that we've been doing just for a short time but
00:07:55.840 like no it's been going on for hundreds of years yeah that whole hog style of cooking you know one of the
00:08:00.660 other things is the entomology of the word barbecue as i mentioned earlier most people relate it back
00:08:05.700 to the term barbacoa some people give credit to the french haitians that call it barbacoa which is
00:08:11.440 basically nose to tail if you will or head to tail and that's kind of to describe the whole hog method
00:08:17.180 of cooking in the carolinas and one of my favorites is beer bar cue pool which was an advertisement that
00:08:25.220 you found throughout the carolinas that daniel von cited saying that you would find inside a bar
00:08:30.420 a beer uh barbecue and pool i don't think that's necessarily where we got the name barbecue but it
00:08:37.040 happened to be one of my favorites when i was doing the research on the history of the word so you
00:08:40.540 mentioned earlier that as you go throughout the barbecue belt in the south there's the different
00:08:45.540 regions of the south have their own take on barbecue and you mentioned a few of them so how does the
00:08:49.760 flavor and the techniques of barbecuing change depending on which part of the south you're in
00:08:53.440 yeah great question the carolinas specifically north carolina is most known for cooking a whole
00:08:59.440 hog so when we visited wilbur's in goldsburg north carolina they don't actually just cook pork butts
00:09:05.320 they cook a whole hog and they chop all of that meat together so you're getting all portions and it
00:09:09.940 has a unique flavor typically a real strong hickory wood is used to smoke and they don't have really
00:09:15.700 any sauce whatsoever it's just a apple cider vinegar with crushed red pepper and salt as you make
00:09:20.740 your way down through south carolina you're starting to pick up more of a mustard based sauce and a lot
00:09:25.560 of folks give credit to a lot of the german immigrants that came over during that time period
00:09:30.060 as you go to georgia and louisiana and alabama alabama you pick up a little bit of a white sauce
00:09:35.340 which is based out of a mayonnaise and if you go up to kentucky you find not really pork you find
00:09:40.080 mutton and then as you make your way west most people typically say that you first find tomato
00:09:45.360 and a little bit of sweetness in the form of a syrup as you find memphis and st louis and kansas
00:09:52.260 city style barbecues and of course as you go all the way further west you're going to pick up more
00:09:56.680 beef in the state of texas and one of my favorites you know right there in tulsa oklahoma they called
00:10:01.700 smoked bologna they called it oklahoma tenderloin so there's a lot of different things that make up
00:10:06.400 the different styles but those are the commonly agreed upon as you make your way from east to west
00:10:10.540 so do you know why the tomato and like the more sweet is in like missouri and kansas city do you
00:10:16.060 i mean you know like you mentioned that the mustard base from the germans and the carolina
00:10:19.600 stuff is more from whatever like why the sweetness as you get west you know it's a good question and
00:10:25.440 that's one that you might have me stumped on i didn't find anything that out of particularity
00:10:29.860 would lend itself to say that tomatoes appeared more in that side of the country i think that just
00:10:35.100 tastes are different you know to me people ask all the time well what is good barbecue i think we
00:10:39.540 all associate barbecue with what we grow up on so for folks in kansas city and memphis and st louis
00:10:45.340 that tend to like a sweeter based sauce when they try carolina style barbecue which i said is just
00:10:51.560 vinegar a little bit of heat from crushed red pepper and salt they don't really consider it barbecue
00:10:56.620 because it's not the barbecue that they grew up on so it's it's still something that's super super
00:11:01.220 hyper regional but as to why you you get more maple syrup or cane syrup or something along those lines as
00:11:07.180 to what makes it sweeter i just think it naturally evolves over time as people's tastes and preferences
00:11:12.040 kind of carry on that way gotcha so i mean you mentioned i someone at people ask you like what
00:11:17.240 makes good barbecue good barbecue you can have bad barbecue like there's bad ribs is it possible like
00:11:23.740 to screw up a pork butt or is it a pretty forgiving meat piece of meat yeah i think one of the unique
00:11:28.820 things about focusing a spotlight on the pork butt it is a forgiving cut right skip steel who's a pretty
00:11:35.460 famous pit master at bogarts in st louis he said it perfectly he said you know cooking is a math
00:11:40.580 problem time plus temperature equals results he's a gentleman that uses hickory he smokes his pork
00:11:47.040 butts at 200 degrees for 20 hours that's quite a commitment right you know i found a gentleman in
00:11:54.520 leachville arkansas at big butts barbecue that will actually break down the pork butts so he cuts them into
00:11:59.900 one and a quarter inch steaks so you get more surface area and he cooks them at about 325 degrees for
00:12:06.020 just a couple of hours the results were different but they were still both delicious so i think in
00:12:11.120 terms of the other cuts it's like a brisket which you know once it's dry it's not good anymore ribs can
00:12:15.720 be quite dry or not a whole lot of meat on the bone the pork butt is one that is quite humble and
00:12:20.600 forgiving and there's a lot of different ways to approach it in this book you visit all these different
00:12:25.060 barbecue joints big ones in the south i mean what do you think they all had in common and besides that
00:12:29.940 like what what were the big differences besides the regional flavors what they're doing they have
00:12:34.220 differences in the way they approach barbecue or innovation or sticking to tradition yeah great
00:12:40.880 question i think we'll dig into it in just a bit but you know the commonality was just great people
00:12:45.580 these pit masters that show up to work at three or four o'clock in the morning to cook all day
00:12:50.020 all day long i mean they're judged more than a michelin star chef so in those instances the
00:12:55.880 commonality was just meeting great people in terms of innovation yes i think anybody can cook great
00:13:01.500 barbecue on the most expensive piece of equipment whatever that might be so if you just have a kettle
00:13:06.400 grill that you can pick up at any hardware store with some charcoal that's one of my favorite ways to
00:13:11.500 cook digging a hole into the backyard to cook a whole hog but we did find quite a bit of innovation
00:13:16.660 nowadays you come across commercial smokers that can smoke you know 20 and 30 butts at a time that
00:13:21.880 is using gas to to control temperature precisely and then they're using some actual real wood for
00:13:27.460 smoke flavor i think the rule is going back to time and temperature equals results it doesn't really
00:13:33.000 matter what you cook on or how expensive your equipment is the food is going to be quite a bit better if
00:13:38.540 you're actually a master of time and temperature control than anything else yeah i have a buddy who does
00:13:43.620 a lot of barbecue and he says you can use a metal garbage can and still cook good because it all
00:13:48.680 comes down to time and temperature absolutely all those things you're going to get a good thing
00:13:52.080 absolutely was there any places that you came across that you saw were doing something really
00:13:55.860 unique with barbecue to change things up yeah i think one of my favorite places that i came across
00:14:01.060 is called heirloom barbecue in atlanta georgia they literally the georgia department of transportation
00:14:06.200 tried to shut the restaurant down because the traffic getting into the restaurant was so bad it was
00:14:11.420 causing problems that's no joke to those in atlanta with the i-85 bridge that recently collapsed
00:14:16.300 atlanta is already a traffic-ridden city but what you find there is a husband and wife cody taylor is
00:14:21.260 originally from knoxville tennessee spent a lot of time in texas so he is a true southern barbecue pit
00:14:27.220 master he married his wife jeon lee who happens to be a korean pop star and i mean it she's like
00:14:32.960 britney spears big in south korea she wanted to get away from the spotlight tended the cordon blue in
00:14:37.860 atlanta and started cooking they got married and what you have is this harmonious flavor of true
00:14:43.260 traditional southern barbecue married with a korean influence so i don't want to say korean barbecue at
00:14:49.160 all it's it's it's nothing like that you're finding pork butts that are smoked you know 16 hours over
00:14:54.360 hickory but they're marinated in a korean red chili rub called gochujong which gives it this incredible
00:15:00.340 umami flavor they've got instead of a traditional coleslaw they make a kimchi slaw their pickles are all done
00:15:05.880 in a south korean way so to me that was a really innovative style of cooking in a barbecue where
00:15:11.680 they're really paying homage to the roots but they're making it their own but it is sort of that
00:15:16.180 innovation is baked in the dna of barbecue because it's like you're combining all these different
00:15:21.420 cultures into this new food right absolutely you know i think the thing about barbecue is we're
00:15:27.520 probably a little slow to walk towards innovation most purists might go to a place like heirloom and claim
00:15:33.380 that because of some of the influences you know it wasn't traditional southern style barbecue i i would
00:15:38.840 hotly disagree i think that barbecue is a constantly evolving space you know and that's one of the
00:15:44.760 things that i wanted to showcase in the book is a whole lot of diversity most people think of of pit
00:15:48.840 masters being uh men but there was quite a quite a few females uh helen turner in brownsville tennessee
00:15:54.220 i mean she's just as as tough as any man i've ever met i mean she's building big fires in an open pit
00:16:00.320 at four o'clock in the morning and working all day the front of house the back of house so you're
00:16:04.080 going to come across people that of all different walks of life that are carrying on the tradition
00:16:08.260 of barbecue and making their own stamp on it as they continue to carry that tradition on so besides
00:16:12.780 you know highlighting these different barbecue places barbecue joints it's a cookbook it's recipes
00:16:17.500 on how to cook pork butt and other things if you're up for it i mean i'd love to walk our listeners
00:16:22.260 through on how to smoke or cook the perfect pork butt for barbecue so let's start with the meat
00:16:28.440 like or you say pork butt's pretty forgiving but when you go and buy a pork butt is it something
00:16:33.440 you can look at the meat and say yeah this is going to be a good piece of meat to cook or
00:16:37.280 no or i should stay away from this one is anything you can tell by the meat yeah so the cool thing
00:16:43.420 about it when you go to the store these are pretty consistent uh you're going to find them most often
00:16:48.260 in a range anywhere from eight to 12 pounds i tend to like one around 10 pounds if i can find that
00:16:54.860 you'll find how much does that feed goodness gracious at least 20 people right and typically
00:16:59.800 you're going to find those and i think your listeners will really appreciate this i buy pork
00:17:03.440 butts at my local grocery store here in nashville tennessee which sometimes has higher food costs
00:17:07.700 for 99 cents a pound right so i can buy a 10 pound butt for 10 dollars and typically feed you know 15
00:17:14.540 to 20 people on depending on the method that i'm using whether it's sandwiches or just on a plate or
00:17:18.700 whatever so you're going to find those you want to look for ones that have a nice fat cap on the top
00:17:24.020 and it'll also include the bone in the shoulder that's really what you're looking for and like i
00:17:28.640 said it's super humble it's super cheap you want to find ones that are fresh but i think any local
00:17:33.200 market you can go down to or ask your butcher to source for you it's a really cheap affordable
00:17:38.120 food source that you can find basically anywhere all right let's talk about the thing that causes a lot
00:17:43.480 of consternation yeah seasoning is it wet or wet or dry seasoning what do you do i came across a lot
00:17:51.640 of different methods so i'll let you guys dig into some of the different recipes me i i prefer a dry
00:17:57.400 rub right uh what's going to flavor the butt and again i'm one that's a little bit more of a purist
00:18:03.100 i don't really use a whole lot of sauce after i've cooked my meat it's kind of more of a carolina style
00:18:08.120 where i might add a little bit of vinegar salt and pepper so by using a dry rub it's one of my first
00:18:13.740 chances besides using actual smoke to flavor the meat the dry rub is really going to be my chance so i
00:18:19.220 love a really really liberal dry rub i saw it just as simple as coarse salt and pepper all the way up
00:18:26.080 to using you know ground garlic and onion powders and mustard powders and chili powders but for me i'm
00:18:32.080 one that likes to really work a rub of which you'll find plenty of recipes in the book all throughout
00:18:37.700 every crevice of the meat before it hits the fire and if you do a a wet seasoning wet rub do you do
00:18:45.440 that after or before you start smoking it what i found yeah a good question i found a lot of people
00:18:51.160 doing kind of like a brine right so even if it was kind of a salt and water solution where they were
00:18:57.140 submerging the uh the actual pork butt overnight or i came across some that that actually would coat it
00:19:02.940 in italian dressing and let it sit overnight the one commonality though before uh whether they used a
00:19:08.980 dry rub or not they were sure to really really wipe down and dry off either the brine or the
00:19:15.020 marinade before they put it on the smoker you don't want to have a wet butt sorry for the pun there and
00:19:20.860 then add a dry rub to it because in the first few hours remember we're cooking at a very low temperature
00:19:25.360 so what happens is all that dry rub is just going to kind of steam off the meat and it kind of goes
00:19:30.560 against the purpose of giving it a dry rub so if you do do a brine or a marinade of any kind on the
00:19:34.960 you want to make sure that you wipe it completely dry before you put a rub or before you even put
00:19:39.960 it on the fire gotcha okay let's talk about actually cooking it so you smoke it right that's the that's
00:19:45.700 traditional way of cooking pork butt is smoking it right yeah true barbecue is is taking you know
00:19:51.160 wood coals i've most often came across mesquite or hickory coals oak coals as well some people prefer
00:19:57.900 fruit woods like an apple or percon that can add a little bit sweeter smoke to the meat but true folks
00:20:03.300 will tell you that you have to actually burn down logs of of wood into coals and then you shovel
00:20:08.540 those coals underneath the meat and the idea is that as the meat kind of gives up its its fatty
00:20:13.260 goodness it it kind of drips down on the fire and that smoke flavors the meat throughout the long
00:20:17.460 process that's the tried and true method you know you can also get away with using lump charcoal which
00:20:23.140 kind of makes that step a little bit easier and then use wood chips to help provide more smoke flavor
00:20:28.860 you know a lot of people are against briquette style charcoal but i came across a gentleman in
00:20:34.200 arkansas that that always used briquettes and got great results so i think there's a lot of different
00:20:38.660 methods there but in terms of the smoke what i find is that most people are trying to impart smoke
00:20:43.180 flavor for the first one to four hours so if you're looking at a pork butt that's about 10 to 12 pounds
00:20:48.760 at around 250 to 275 degrees you're looking at probably a cooking time anywhere between 12 to 16 hours with
00:20:55.800 most people adding some of the actual wood chips into the first four hours of cooking wow so you're
00:21:01.020 looking at 16 hours like so if you were like wanting to smoke something for the weekend or for
00:21:05.300 like a party like say a saturday night when would you need to start ideally hey that's the fun part
00:21:11.000 if you ask me you start the night before you turn on some waylon jennings and crack open a cold beer
00:21:14.900 you know that's one of the things where having a little bit more sophisticated smoker plays to your
00:21:19.120 advantage using a kettle style grill you're going to be up a couple times during the night to replace
00:21:23.920 charcoal if you have an egg style cooker you can you can get that thing set and it'll hold the
00:21:28.720 temperature for you for 16 20 hours so that's one advantage i will say of having a little bit more
00:21:34.160 expensive equipment or even a gas style cooker where you can absolutely regulate that temperature to a
00:21:39.140 tea and then add your wood chips for that smoke flavor but most folks are doing this uh the night
00:21:43.880 before you know one shortcut that you can use that i found throughout throughout my travels was cutting
00:21:48.720 that pork butt down maybe in half or into four portions so that you create more surface area
00:21:53.240 so that that heat can work around the meat in a shorter period of time or what i find a lot
00:21:58.040 of folks doing is the old texas crutch method uh and this is one of my favorite things that i found
00:22:03.200 people doing with ribs and brisket and even the pork butt they'll smoke it for you know four to six
00:22:08.560 hours over the fire and then they'll pull it off and they'll wrap it in aluminum foil and what that
00:22:13.280 does is it it prevents any more smoke from penetrating the meat but it creates sort of a
00:22:17.420 convection style cooking so that it continues to cook and tenderize the meat and i find that if you use
00:22:23.140 that method instead of it taking you know 16 hours you might be able to pull the whole thing off in
00:22:27.000 10 or 12 hours instead okay that makes sense then like what do you do after you smoke it what do you
00:22:33.580 think is the best way to to prepare to present them you know for me shred it slice it yeah there's
00:22:39.580 again uh thousands of opinions on it the first thing you need to do just like when you're cooking a
00:22:44.220 great steak is you need to let it rest that was another commonality that every pit master that i met
00:22:49.460 within my travels agreed so whether it was 30 minutes off the uh the heat or even up to an hour
00:22:54.180 or a few hours it's important to allow that meat to rest it gets its name pulled pork from just actually
00:23:00.180 what you do you should literally be able to pull the bone out of it clean there should be no meat on
00:23:04.480 the bone that's when you know that you've cooked it to the right temperature most folks will tell you
00:23:08.340 that you want to cook it to 200 to 205 degrees to make sure that it's going to pull correctly so it
00:23:13.160 should be super super tender and pull easily carolina style because they're typically cooking a whole
00:23:18.260 hog they tend to chop the meat so they'll work cleaver into the meat and actually have a chopped
00:23:23.300 meat and then when you mentioned sliced i didn't come across that a whole lot with the actual pork
00:23:27.760 butt up in kentucky we came across barbecued mutton which was typically chipped which would be more of
00:23:33.240 a pulled style or they would actually slice that so that was the only place that we came across a slice
00:23:37.860 style of the butt okay and suggestions on what to serve with your pork butt just like coleslaw
00:23:43.580 baked beans i mean are is baked beans a thing like for southern barbecue is that a texas thing
00:23:47.860 oh baked beans are huge i think we give you probably 75 80 side recipes for uh rounding
00:23:54.240 out the pork butt you know and so traditionally it's served on a sandwich right you can choose
00:23:58.640 whether you want to add sauce to it if you want to top it with a slaw or pickles or onions you're
00:24:03.200 going to get a lot of different recipes for the method of service i think what's really cool is
00:24:06.540 you know in texas they serve their pulled pork on tacos right i came across a pulled pork ramen where
00:24:12.940 they're actually taking the pork meat and infusing it into a a bowl of noodles and ramen so for me
00:24:18.280 however you want to serve it there's a lot of different variances and i think this is a good
00:24:21.860 point you know we've talked a lot about a pretty lengthy cooking process whether it's 20 hours or a
00:24:26.840 few hours it's a big commitment i wanted to write a book in a way that if you didn't have time to cook
00:24:33.320 your own butt you could go to your local grocery store or your local barbecue restaurant and pick up a
00:24:38.460 pound or two of of pulled or chipped pork and use that as a base to all the other recipes in the book
00:24:44.540 so if you're if your time is a pinch and you still want to make these recipes just outsource that person
00:24:49.740 that portion to uh the local store or restaurant and you can still get a lot of enjoyment out of
00:24:54.560 cooking the recipes all right so i'm from oklahoma grew up in texas a little bit we can't talk we can't
00:25:00.260 talk barbecue talking beef let's talk brisket like man i've messed up lots of briskets before
00:25:06.380 trying to cook is they're just it's such a finicky piece of meat i mean what's the secret to make
00:25:11.280 sure you get something that's just nice and tender and just just it's it's you can eat it right like
00:25:17.560 you're not like chewing a piece of leather yeah i gotta be honest with you a friend of mine who works
00:25:22.580 for the fbi told me about a place in san antonio called b daddy's barbecue you gotta be you know when
00:25:29.140 you think about it finding a pork butt in texas was really difficult but the reason i went there is
00:25:33.120 because you have so many military guys that are down there from other parts of the south
00:25:36.600 that just demanded a pork butt i went for the pork butt but i could not leave because of the beef
00:25:42.520 ribs and the brisket you know one thing about brisket is it's hard to find and source a quality
00:25:47.680 of of meat i mean you've got to really spend a good bit of money to get a great cut you know depending on
00:25:52.720 the time of the year that the cows are actually slaughtered that's going to play a big part into the
00:25:56.640 quality of the cut that you're actually going to smoke from there it is like i said time and
00:26:01.000 temperature equals results br anderson who's the pit master down there he uses salt and pepper
00:26:05.520 he smokes it low and slow and then he actually wraps his kind of in a craft style paper so it's
00:26:11.160 it's a bit of that texas crutch method but not using foil so it keeps it nice and moist but it's not
00:26:16.800 kind of convecting that heat so it's a little bit more gentle of a cooking method you know i think
00:26:21.280 brisket is a finicky meat you know you want it to be moist you want it to be fall apart tender
00:26:25.260 and there's a fine line typically most pit masters will tell you that they've got about a 30 minute
00:26:30.000 window to where it needs a little bit more cooking and then if you go too long it's going to be dry
00:26:34.760 and i think it's just something that you have to perfect every time but we certainly give you his
00:26:38.340 recipe and method for you to try out at your own home that's awesome well hey matt been a great
00:26:42.680 conversation where can people learn more about the book and your work yeah thank you for having me
00:26:47.320 back we are going to do some of the recipes on on the blog at the art of manliness and then you
00:26:52.200 can also check me out uh instagram at matt more music or uh via my site at mattrmore.com
00:26:58.280 awesome matt more thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure hey brett thanks
00:27:02.640 my guest today was matt more his latest book is the south's best butts it's available on amazon.com
00:27:07.480 and bookstores everywhere pick up a copy also you can check out more about his work at mattmore.com
00:27:12.900 also check out our show notes at aom.is slash pork butt where you find links to resources we
00:27:17.960 delve deeper into this topic and you can find more of matt's cooking content at theartofmanliness.com
00:27:22.960 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:27:38.480 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the
00:27:42.680 show i've got something out of it i'd appreciate it if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher
00:27:45.860 that helps us out a lot as always thank you for your continued support and until next time this is
00:27:49.900 brem mckay telling you to stay manly
00:27:52.120 you